Dems lag badly in outside spending

Health Care for Americans Now, for example, was a major player during the health care debate and aired a series of TV ads. But it’s not going on the air for any House candidates this fall, according to an official, and will instead focus on its efforts on phone calls to seniors. Another progressive group that has frequently been on TV in the Obama era, Americans United for Change, said it also wouldn’t be on the air in any individual races.

Some organizations are holding back at the moment but signal that they’ll engage soon.

“There’s no doubt that Big Oil and the polluters are going to spend more money,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “But we’ve spent some money, and we’ll definitely spend some more.”

Karpinski wouldn’t say specifically what his group would do on the airwaves, though.

There have been some ads for House Democrats paid for by organized labor, but much of its money is going to traditional get-out-the-vote activities.

Service Employees International Union, the country’s largest union, is targeting from 15 to 20 House races, according to spokesman Teddy Davis. But it won’t air TV ads in every one of those districts, and much of its effort will be on the ground.

“When you’re looking at House races that can be decided by 1,000 to 2,000 votes, doing field and GOTV is our bread and butter and what the other side can’t match,” AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale said.

A Democratic campaign official said labor’s ground game is appreciated — but might be moot if their candidates can’t first close the gap in the polls heading into Election Day.

“Field only gets you so far if you’re getting buried,” the aide said.

Perhaps most frustrating for Democrats is the absence of a pure, campaign-oriented third-party group along the lines of American Crossroads, the group founded in part by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie and now run by veteran Republicans Steven Law and Mike Duncan. No organization on the left will do anything like what American Crossroads, with a fundraising goal of $52 million, is doing now for GOP Senate candidates. And what worries some House Democratic officials is that if Law and Duncan, seeing better prospects for carrying the House than the Senate, shift some of their money away from the statewide races into less expensive congressional campaigns.

Jim Jordan and two other Democratic operatives have started an independent expenditure group called Commonsense Ten that has begun airing ads in Senate races and may offer some help to a few House candidates.